


Hath Little Need of Mistletoe

by Sea-Glass (PJ_Marvell)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Holiday Cheer Event, Orcish Moonshine, the theological significance of mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/pseuds/Sea-Glass
Summary: Hamid put proper thought into this party- he’d got alcohol, food and found the only florist in Damascus that had survived the drought and bought bunches of holly and mistletoe.  He’d even invited Oscar Wilde. Not that there had been much point in that.  Wilde had two drinks then fell asleep in the corner.





	Hath Little Need of Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Piles of Nonsense Holiday Cheer Event - December 22nd - Mistletoe (yes I'm aware it's almost 48 hours late). This was initially going to be angsty Hamid seasonal retrospection but then I decided to get everyone drunk instead.
> 
> _"Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow Hath little need of Mistletoe" - John Kendrick Bangs_

The thing is.

The thing _is_ , right.

The thing. Is.

The thing is this Yuletide party seemed like a really good idea at the time, but now Hamid’s extremely drunk and he can’t remember the context of that decision. He’d put proper thought into it and everything - he’d got alcohol, food and found the only florist in Damascus that had survived the drought and bought bunches of holly and mistletoe. He’d even invited Oscar Wilde. Not that there had been much point in that. Wilde had two drinks then fell asleep in the corner. He’s still there, snoring gently.

Now they’re in their hotel suite, window open to let some Damascan evening air in. Azu left to do something very important and Hamid is trying very earnestly to explain Yule to the rest of L.O.L.O.M.G. It doesn’t help that there seem to be four people facing him over the table instead of the two he’s pretty sure he should be seeing.

“The thing is,” he starts for the fourth time, squinting a little as he concentrates on Sasha’s face. “It’s the seasons.” He nods, sitting back and reaching for his glass again. He captures it successfully on the second go and takes another sip of orcish moonshine. (He regrets it a lot less than his first few glasses. Really grows on you, this stuff).

Sasha blinks like a cat, slowly and with great attention paid to each part of the movement. “The plant thing is the seasons?”

“No. Nonono. The mistletoe is…” Hamid squints up at the bunch of mistletoe hanging from the hotel room’s rafters, attempting to remember how it got up there and failing. “It means...if you’ve got mistletoe, thennn winter’s...nearly...over?” He trails off, the sentence pitching up at the end. He thinks that’s right.

“So,” Grizzop leans forward, aiming to put his elbow on his knee but missing. “This party happens when you find mistletoe? But we had to buy ours. Doesn’t grow in Damascus.”

Hamid looks helplessly at him. He’s out of his depth in both theology and alcohol and he really doesn’t remember what the mistletoe is for. Except for kissing under, and he’s not yet been brave enough to explain that one. Especially as Grizzop is, according to Sasha, a cuddly drunk.

This isn’t really Hamid’s holiday, if he’s honest. A festival like Yuletide needs seasons, and while the temperatures shift from scorching to merely warm in Cairo, there’s nothing like the all-around transformation the northern climates go through. It amazed Hamid, his first spring in England, the way the frost and skeletal trees gave way to flowers and blossom and then more greenery than he’d ever imagined. Nature like that was something to base a religion on. Or if not a religion, at least a solid set of solstice traditions.

“The mistletoe,” begins Hamid, looking hard at his glass and then unsteadily between Grizzop and Sasha. “Is not the point.”

“I thought you said it was the seasons,” says Sasha.

“Yes, it is!”

“The mistletoe?”

“The point!” Hamid stabs a finger in the air. “The seasons are the point.”

“Ohhh,” says Grizzop. Then, “I don’t get it.”

“It’s about,” Hamid concentrates hard, trying desperately to remember Fifth Year Theology. “Harvests. And growing things. And - and - making winter...go away?”

“Magic can do that?” Sasha sounds sceptical. Slurred, but sceptical.

“Not magic,” he says. “But...ritual. Greeting the sunrise to make the day longer. Superstitionion. You know.”

“Right well, that’s why,” Grizzop nods sagely. “We couldn’t greet the sun. We lived underground.”

Hamid pauses, momentarily stumped. “Well....Okay...But....Don’t you get seasons, and stuff, underground? Times when you have to harvest...mushrooms? Or - or when it’s eel catching time?”

“It’s always eel-catching time,” replies Sasha, tipping a few more degrees away from the vertical. “‘s why eels are great.”

Hamid wants to sigh in exasperation, but his muscles have temporarily deserted him and he merely slumps a bit on his exhale. Somewhere in him is the point that traditions aren’t meant to be explainable or logical or have a solid point; sometimes they just _are_. Truth be told, whatever his rationalisation all those hours ago was, this party is definitely happening because Hamid wanted it to.

Hamid loves Yuletide, loves it despite coming to it late and as an outsider. But the romance of it had spoken to his soul, from the way his new country had fought against the gathering darkness by stringing lights overhead and filling each window with candles to the way people had named it as a time for family, to gather together inside, away from the cold, and remember how much you liked each other. That Yuletide chocolate box image of extended families gathered in golden-lit cottages, smiling and eating and giving gifts - it’s something Hamid yearned for in his years in England, miles from home and still in awe of a father he’d not yet learned was flesh and not granite.

He yearns for it now. It’s not something he’s prepared to say out loud, of course.

“Look,” he starts again, firmly. “The point about Yuletide is…”

As Hamid’s thoughts slowly shunt into position, trying to find an argument of why they should be celebrating other than “I just really like it, all right?”, the door opens and Azu arrives, saving him from any further feats of comparative folklorics. She smiles as she kicks her boots off, and gently closes the door, an enormous sack hefted over one shoulder.

“Azu!” Sasha grins, the most unguarded Hamid thinks he’s ever seen her. “Where you been?”

“Well,” says Azu, walking over to the table and dropping the sack onto the carpet next to them. “Hamid said that at Yuletide friends and family give each other gifts. I thought we should have some gifts.”

Hamid has a brief flash of certainty that she should be wearing a red and white hat.

“Presents!” Grizzop is suddenly bolt upright and vibrating slightly. “Whatdidyougetmewhatdidyougetme?”

“Well, there wasn’t much,” said Azu, kneeling next to the sack and reaching in.

Hamid never did get around to asking where exactly Azu had been shopping but wherever it was had apparently been outfitted with them in mind. Sasha gets new daggers, beautiful adamantine things with filigree edges. Grizzop has a cloak fastener of silver and some smoky gems - it's shaped like a half-moon and glitters like moonlight on snow. Hamid himself receives a pendant on a rose gold chain, a blown glass thing that flowed and curled like flame - when Azu drops it in his palm, it’s hot to the touch.

Azu herself settles a new pair of pink enameled throwing axes on her hip as other gifts are pinned, tied or (in Sasha’s case) thrown at the ceiling to check the balance. Wilde’s present (a silk sleeping mask) is placed gently over his face; he emits a small snort, but otherwise slumbers on. Somewhere along the way everyone decides that Azu needs a hat and the decorations are repurposed to make her a wreath of winter glory.

The moonshine continues to flow, which merely makes Azu slightly louder and merrier, even as the rest of them slip slowly towards the point at which they’re going to have to start holding on to the floor while lying down. Grizzop eventually makes the transition from upright to horizontal, slumping onto Sasha’s arm and beginning to snore a little. Sasha just beams beatifically down at him, before her head begins to nod too.

Hamid doesn’t notice he’s fallen asleep until he’s woken by Azu getting up. To be fair to her, she had done her very best to shift him off her lap and onto the sofa, but he still snuffles and looks up in confusion.

“Shhh,” Azu whispers, laying him back down again. “I’m just going to get blankets.”

“Okay,” smiles Hamid, immediately curling back up. He can hear Sasha muttering in her sleep, a snore that might be Wilde and a scratching noise that could be Grizzop twitching. None of it keeps him awake - it feels right, somehow. Much as the blanket does, when he feels Azu tuck it gently around him as he drifts back down into sleep again.

They’re all going to feel awful in the morning. There will probably be arguments about who’s fault it was and why they did this in the first place, but those are tomorrow-Hamid’s problems. Today-Hamid is content to fall asleep to the sounds of his friends’ breathing, as peace descends over the room and not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.


End file.
